


rolling through the endless summers

by jeromesqualor



Category: The Likely Lads (TV), Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?
Genre: M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28506126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeromesqualor/pseuds/jeromesqualor
Summary: Terry wakes up just before eight, still half-cut from the night before. From this morning, more like – it was dawn by the time he and Bob got to bed.Teenage Bob and Terry bike to Berwick. Based on conversations in the episode The Great Race.
Relationships: Terry Collier/Bob Ferris
Kudos: 2





	rolling through the endless summers

**Author's Note:**

> Found this in my archives. I offer no justification. Title is a lyric from Polaroid Picture by Frank Turner that has jack shit to do with the fic.

Terry wakes up just before eight, still half-cut from the night before. From this morning, more like – it was dawn by the time he and Bob got to bed. He remembers drinking cans of lager on the riverbank, but it’s blurry: a warm tingle under his skin and flashes of laughter and grass stains, the cold can in his hand and Bob’s warm presence at his side. They talked about meeting up with the lads from school, or going to look for some girls, but if they did, Terry has no memory of it. 

He shakes Bob awake next to him. Bob groans, but he keeps his eyes shut and buries himself further under the blankets. “Leave me alone, Terry,” he says, rolling over just enough to turn his back.

Terry hangs about as far out of the bed as he can while still technically sitting on it to pick last night’s trousers up off the floor and fumble in the pockets. He finds a cigarette, places it between his lips, and keeps searching for his lighter. “We’re cycling to Berwick today, Robert,” he says, giving Bob another, rougher shake. Terry sees his lighter on his bedside table. He tosses it in the air and catches it, grinning, then lights his cigarette.

He thinks about getting out of bed – stretching his creaky limbs and blowing his cigarette smoke out the window – but instead he sits upright against the headboard. He looks down at Bob, rolled onto his back with the covers tucked up to his chin. A lot of the time Bob’s features are arranged in a sort of dour expression, but right now, he looks soft and round and at ease. Terry takes a drag of his cigarette and thinks it’ll probably be funny if he ashes it on top of Bob.

“Stop staring at me,” Bob says. His eyes are still closed, but Terry looks away anyway. 

“C’mon. We’ll have a fry, then get out the bikes,” he says, giving Bob one last shake as he climbs out of bed. Snatches of last night’s memories come to Terry in flashes: almost getting in a fistfight with John when him and his lads came by; Bob whinging about Thelma after their latest falling out, as always; tripping over his drunken feet and crashing into Bob. He can’t tell if they froze in place like that – close enough to hear each other’s breathing, if they could stop giggling long enough to catch their breath – or his memory has. He shivers. 

By the time Bob gets up, Terry is dressed and eating breakfast in the kitchen. “Lovely sausages,” he says by way of good morning. 

“Oh aye,” Bob says. Terry immediately thinks that he has the hump about  _ something _ , even if he hasn’t the foggiest what. He wishes he could remember more of last night, wishes he could piece together the little he can. 

“You all set for Berwick then?” Terry asks, biting into a rasher. Another flash – just of Bob’s mouth, not even words coming out of it, just his mouth – and Terry cringes inwardly, realising he must have been…  _ staring _ . Bob bites his bottom lip in the memory, and this-morning-Terry mimics him unconsciously, heat pooling in his stomach. 

He jumps up from his seat, makes himself busy clearing the dishes off the table. 

Close enough to hear each other’s breathing, if they could stop giggling long enough to catch their breath. He steadies himself – Bob steadies him, a hand on his lower back and a jumper to ball his fists in – but doesn’t step away. His eyes dart to Bob’s mouth, only for a split second. 

Terry thought that maybe Bob would be in one of his moods and refuse to come, but next thing they’re both on their bikes. It’s a couple of hours to Berwick, and they usually stop more than they need to, having cups of tea in cafes or lazing against hay bales. They lean against a hay bale for a full hour in the afternoon, passing a can of lager back and forth with the sun on their faces.

Bob’s fingers touch off Terry’s and linger a second too long, and Terry is suddenly hyper-aware of how close they’re sitting. Shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. Their legs are stretched out on the grass – not touching – and Terry thinks involuntarily about tangling his in Bob’s. He gives Bob a shove instead: punishment for some snarky remark he was only half-listening to. Bob laughs.

Another fragment of last night flashes. Bob, laughing, mouth right next to Terry’s ear. He can feel how warm is breath is. Then he presses his face in Terry’s neck, nuzzling almost. Terry is frozen, hands bunched in the back of Bob’s coat, but he’s laughing, too. “Love ya, kid,” Bob says, almost unbearably fond. 

Terry gets up and gets on his bike. 

“Hey! Slow up!” Bob shouts. He grunts as he climb to his feet. He holds out the can for Terry to take, wiping the grass off his trousers with his other hand. 

Terry rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he says, cycling slow circles around the hay bale, “We don’t have all day. Berwick awaits.”

Bob reaches his free hand over his shoulder to wipe off some hay stuck to his jumper. The angle makes his jumper ride up, exposing a strip of bare skin around his belly. The way Terry’s cycling around makes Bob either peripheral to his line of sight or out of it altogether, but his eyes still lock onto the exposed skin like a magnet. White pale, like it’s never seen the sun. Soft and round where Terry is all sharp angles. He’s seen Bob shirtless plenty – more than he’d care to recall, really – so he can’t really explain why he’s magnetised by an inch of bare skin. He speeds up his pedalling and gets back towards the road, shouting behind him again for Bob to hurry up. 

He suddenly remembers something else from last night, although it’s so hazy that it might be a dream. He and Bob are on the ground, rough-housing, and he’s practically hoarse from laughing. He tickles Bob beneath him, who giggles and squirms. He’s not sure how, but at some point, his hands go under Bob’s jumper, and – it’s like the memory is fogged over – they aren’t tickling anymore so much as... rubbing? Caressing? He can practically feel Bob’s soft belly under his fingers, the little hairs on the trail from his belly button, but it’s a sense memory devoid of any context or meaning. 

He pedals faster, and resolutely does not think about the way his dick twitched at the thought. 

Their next stop is at a cafe. Terry gets there first, and orders two cups of tea for himself and Bob. When Bob arrives a few minutes later, Terry can instantly tell he’s spent the ride since the hay bale stop just fuming to himself. 

“You bastard,” Bob says. There’s heat in it, but a kind that Terry recognises will soon evaporate. 

Terry gestures silently at Bob’s cup and pulls out a cigarette. “You buy a fella a cuppa and he calls you bastard. That’s the way this country is going, is it?”

Bob collapses in the chair opposite Terry and guzzles down his tea. “Did you get any cakes?”

Terry takes a long drag on his cigarette, looking at Bob carefully – almost analytically. He tries to reconcile the soft belly he practically had a nervous breakdown over half an hour ago with the whiny git across from him. His cold, calculated analysis is interrupted somewhat when he’s distracted by the heat pooling in his groin. 

“Cakes?” Bob repeats, annoyed. Pause. “Are you listening to me at all?”

“No, I did not get you bloody cakes,” Terry snaps, coming back to reality. He ashes his cigarette and shifts in his chair. 

“Christ, what are you sore about?”

“Nothing,” Terry says, taking a drink of his now lukewarm tea. He tries to piece together his memories from last night, but they’re getting mixed up with weird, fake stuff that his mind keeps supplying against his explicit request. He’s trying to remember Bob squirming underneath him from tickling, and suddenly Bob is underneath him chest-to-chest, their mouths together in a hard, forceful kiss. He’s biting Bob’s lower lip so much he might break the skin. His knee slides between Bob’s thighs, and if Bob is squirming under him, it’s helpless writhing, his hips jerking forward into empty air, into Terry’s firm thigh, into Terry’s hand. 

Terry’s had this...  _ thing _ with Bob for a long time, but it’s always been a small if persistent detail, easily packed away and ignored. If there was something he felt for Bob that wasn’t strictly best friendship, it still looked like best friendship in practice. But now that seems to have gone totally haywire. The dull ache in his chest has become something insistent, urgent, electric.  _ Hot _ and wet and  _ distracting _ . It feels like he’s going through some weird second puberty, like his dick has just woken up and refuses to obey its master. 

He imagines Bob kneeling in front of him, eyes half-lidded, lips plump and red and bitten. His mouth open and inviting: a hot wet hole desperate to be filled. Terry pushes the thought away without quite as much force as he had been earlier. 

The real Bob sitting across from him is biting his lower lip, tipping his empty cup to one side to collect the last few drops. Terry wants to kiss him so badly that the force of it winds him. 

He sighs performatively. “What kind of cake d’ya want?”

Bob smiles a hundred watts. “Lemon.”

Terry puts out his hand expectantly, and Bob hands him the money. 

Terry buys two small cakes – chocolate for him, lemon for Bob. He notes with relief that his dick didn’t generate some ridiculous image of, like, mashing lemon tea cake up Bob’s arse or something, but of course just noticing that prompts his dick to generate a distressingly  _ not _ ridiculous image of Bob eating lemon tea cake off Terry’s stomach, licking and nipping as he makes his way down to his cock, straining painfully against the confines of his trousers. Terry sits down double speed, praying his erection hadn’t become visible before he got to his chair. 

“Thanks, mate,” Bob says, apparently oblivious. Terry is genuinely getting scared. How the fuck is he supposed to live if he can’t buy Bob a lemon tea cake without getting hard? 

“Terry,” Bob says, suddenly hushed and serious, “Before we get to Berwick, do you want to have a quick chat about last night?”

Terry’s blood goes cold. From the flashes of memory he’s assembled, he can’t think of anything Bob would want to have a serious talk about. Which either means Bob is being a melodramatic idiot – can never write off the possibility – or Terry’s memory is missing something pretty major. 

He nods anyway. “Fire away.”

“What?” Bob says, furrowing his brow, “Here?” 

There are only two other people in the cafe including staff. Definitely pretty serious then. “Or wherever,” Terry adds. 

“Okay,” Bob says, scepticism audible. “Outside, then? After we finish this.” He gestures at the cakes. 

Terry’s barely touched his. He nods again. 

They have their talk in a field down the road from the cafe. Terry lights another cigarette and waits for Bob to speak. Bob doesn’t say anything, like he’s waiting for Terry to go first. 

Bob breaks. “I just thought we should talk about what happened last night. If you want to pretend nothing happened, I have no problem doing that, but I thought – we should – you know... Make a decision about it.”

Terry puffs on his cigarette and blinks at him. 

“Look, Terry, kid, I’m not going to tell anyone.” (Terry feels his eyes widen involuntarily.) “And I’m not worried about you telling anyone. It’s not about that. I just think we should...” He trails off. “Should have a quick chat about it,” he finishes weakly, “Is all.”

Terry wonders how long Bob can talk without giving any indication whatsoever what the bloody hell he’s on about. Then it comes back to him, clear as bell. 

Close enough to hear each other’s breathing, if they could stop giggling long enough to catch their breath. He steadies himself – Bob steadies him, a hand on his lower back and a jumper to ball his fists in – but doesn’t step away. His eyes dart to Bob’s mouth, only for a split second. 

And then Bob leans forward, or he does, or they both do, but then they’re kissing. It’s gentle and sweet and chaste and he’s clinging to Bob’s jumper just to keep upright. Terry darts his tongue out, and Bob opens up under him, wet and sloppy and overeager. Bob isn’t just holding him  _ up _ , he’s holding him  _ close _ , chest to chest, hip to hip, and Terry latches his mouth to Bob’s neck, kisses and licks and bites. He’s burying his fingers in the hair at Bob’s nape and giving a short sharp tug, hears Bob barely stifle a wordless moan. 

Then as soon as it began they’ve broken apart, sitting on the grass laughing and drinking like normal. Terry can’t account for the why – did he stop or did Bob? – but he’s certain of the account. This is, he supposes, why his dick has been ready for duty all day. 

“A quick chat,” Terry repeats, trying to decode the words. Bob could be coming up with a way to call him a dirty shirtlifter and threaten to call the police, for all he knows. Although the memory of Bob’s moan –  _ fuck _ , how did he forget that sound, low and gutteral and all thanks to him – tells him different. 

“Yeah,” Bob says, nodding with a fake kind of authority. 

Terry pictures Bob launching at him, knocking the cigarette out of his hand and nearly knocking him over. Crashing their mouths together, forceful, desperate. Terry’s hips stuttering forward, hot and hard and eager, while he peppers kisses to the side of Bob’s mouth, across his cheeks, along his jawline. He imagines pushing Bob’s jumper up to dig his fingers into his belly, the sense memory and the fantasy conjoined, a double exposure of last night and this afternoon. He wants it like he wants to breathe: obvious, unthinking. 

“Nothing to chat about,” Terry says carefully, taking a drag on his cigarette, “Since nothing happened.” 

Bob smiles, warm but mostly inscrutable. He nods, and they start walking back towards the road, shoulders bumping like pinballs. 

Terry feels the hot urgency drain out of him, the electric charge in his groin return to a dull ache in his chest. Bob is whinging about Thelma again, and Terry can hear in his voice that he’s within forty-eight hours of trying to win her back. He lets their fingers brush when their shoulders bump, the briefest approximation of hand holding. By the time they get back on their bikes, Terry has convinced himself that he didn’t remember the kissing so much as remember a weird half-dream. 

When it happens again – occasionally, when they’re both properly plastered, Terry licking at Bob’s collarbone, Bob’s fingers kneading into Terry’s arse, a rough palm through the front of his trousers, erratic and totally uncoordinated – they don’t talk about it, just like they agreed. 


End file.
